Tender Stranger

by Diana Palmer

  He wasn’t exactly rude, but she turned quickly back to the window in silence. She felt uneasy, and tried to banish the feeling. He was her husband now. She’d have to learn not to ruffle him. She leaned back, closed her eyes and convinced herself that she was worrying needlessly. Surely there were no dark secrets in his past.

  Someone in the seat ahead of them rang for the stewardess, and Dani closed her eyes, thinking what a long flight this was going to be. They’d planned to stop over in Greenville and then decide who would move and who wouldn’t. He wanted to see where she lived, he’d said, to meet her friend Harriett and see the little bookshop she owned. She’d been flattered by his interest.

  She had just closed her eyes when she heard a loud gasp and then a cry from nearby. Her eyes opened to see the stewardess being held roughly by a man in brown slacks and an open-necked white shirt. He had a foreign look, and his eyes were glazed with violence. At the stewardess’s neck he was holding a hypodermic syringe. Another man who had been sitting with him got calmly to his feet, walked around the man with the syringe and went into the cockpit.

  There was a loud yell and the copilot appeared, took one look at what was happening and seemed to go white.

  “Yes, he’s telling the truth, as near as I can tell,” the copilot called into the cockpit.

  There was a buzz of conversation that was unintelligible, then the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker and Dutch stiffened, his dark gaze going slowly over the man with the syringe.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hall.” The deep voice was deceptively calm. “The plane is being diverted to Cuba. Please keep calm, remain in your seats and do exactly as you’re told. Thank you.”

  The unarmed man came out of the cockpit, twitching his thick mustache, and fumbled around with the intercom until he figured it out.

  “We wish no one to be harmed,” he said. “The syringe my friend is holding to the neck of this lovely young lady is filled with hydrochloric acid.” Shocked murmurs went through the crowd, especially when the shorter, bald man took the syringe to one side and deliberately let one drop fall on the fabric of the seat. It smoldered and gave a vivid impression of the impact it would have on the stewardess’s neck. “So for the young lady’s sake, please keep calm,” he continued. “We will harm you only if you make it necessary.”

  He hung up the intercom and went back into the cockpit. The man with the syringe tugged the petite blond stewardess along with him, ignoring the passengers. Apparently, he thought the threat of the syringe was enough to prevent any interference.

  And it seemed he was right. The other passengers murmured uneasily among themselves.

  “Professionals,” Dutch said quietly. “They must want to get out of the country pretty badly.”

  Dani eyed him uncomfortably. “Who are they, do you think?”

  “No idea,” he said.

  “They wouldn’t really use that acid on her?” she asked, her voice soft with astonishment.

  He turned and looked down at her, into gray eyes more innocent than any he’d ever seen. He frowned. “My God, of course they’d use it!”

  Her oval face paled. She looked past him to where one of the men was barely visible, his arm still around the stewardess.

  “Can’t the captain do something?” she said then.

  “Sure.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, clasping his lean, tough hands over his stomach. “He can do exactly what they tell him until they get off the plane. All they want is a free ride. Once they’ve had it, they’ll leave.”

  She gnawed on her lower lip. “Aren’t you worried?” she asked.

  “They aren’t holding the syringe to my neck.”

  His indifference shocked her. She was terrified for the stewardess. Horrified, she forced her eyes back to her lap. For God’s sake, what kind of man had she married?

  He closed his eyes again, ignoring her contemptuous stare. He regretted the need to shock her, but he needed time to think, and he couldn’t do it if she was talking. Now he had sufficient quiet to put together a plan. They wouldn’t hurt the girl if their demands were met. But glitches sometimes happened. In case one developed, he had to think of a way out. There were two men, but only one was armed. And obviously, they hadn’t been able to get anything metallic through the sensors. That was good. They might have a plastic knife or two between them, or a pocket knife like the one Dutch was carrying—a knife that had special uses. His was balanced and excellent for throwing. And he had few equals with a knife. He smiled.

  Dani glanced at Dutch with mingled hurt and curiosity and rage. He was asleep, for heaven’s sake! In the middle of a hijacking, he was asleep! She sighed angrily. Well, what did she expect him to do? Leap up from the seat like one of the heroes in the books she read and deliver them all from the terrorists? Fat chance!

  A hijacking. She sighed, nervously fingering her purse. She wondered how the poor stewardess felt. The woman was doing her best to stay calm, but it couldn’t have been easy. Knowing what was in that syringe, and how quickly it would work if she were injected with it…Dani shuddered at just the thought. In her innocence she’d never believed that there were such fiendish people sharing the world with her.

  Dutch opened one eye and closed it again. Dani gave him an exasperated look and clasped her hands to still their trembling. The taller of the hijackers had something in his hand that looked suspiciously like a grenade, and as the plane grew closer to Cuba, he began to pace nervously.

  The shorter hijacker, the bald one who was holding the stewardess prisoner, moved into view. He forced the stewardess into the front seat, which was just one ahead of Dutch and Dani, and sat beside her, with the syringe still at her throat.

  He was tiring, Dutch mused. And the other one was getting a little panicky. His dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He’d bet his life that the grenade was plastic. How else could they have cleared airport security? One of the magazines on covert operations ran advertisements for the fakes—they were dirt cheap and, at a distance, realistic enough to fool a civilian. Which Dutch wasn’t.

  He’d wait until the plane landed in Cuba. If they were granted asylum, fine. If not, he was going to put a monkey wrench into their act. He owed it to Dani, sitting so quiet and disillusioned beside him. She still believed in heroes, although God alone knew what she thought of him right now.

  When the plane landed in Havana the shorter man stayed beside the stewardess while the taller one went into the cockpit. He stayed there only a few minutes, and then burst out the small doorway with wild eyes, cursing violently.

  “What is it? What is it!” the smaller man demanded.

  “They will not let us disembark! They will not give us asylum!” the taller man cried. He looked around wildly, clasping the forgotten grenade in his hands and ignoring the horrified looks and cries of the passengers. “What shall we do? They will give us fuel but not asylum. What shall we do? We cannot go back to Mexico!”

  “Cuidado!” the older man cautioned sharply. “We will go to Miami. Then we will seek asylum from our backers overseas,” he said. “Tell them to fly to Miami.”

  Now, that was interesting, Dutch thought as he watched the taller man hesitate and then go back into the cockpit. He had a hunch that the gentlemen with the stage props were Central American natives. But obviously they had no wish to be connected with any of the Central American countries. And that talk of comrades overseas sounded very familiar. As almost everyone knew, there were foreign interests at work all over Central America.

  The taller man was back in a minute. “They are turning toward Miami,” he told his companion.

  “Bueno!” The short man sounded relieved. “Come.”

  He forced the stewardess to her feet and dragged her along with him as he urged the tall man toward the cockpit. “We will explain the demands the pilot is to present to the American authorities,” the short one murmured.

  Dutch’s eyes opened. “How much courage do you have, Mrs.
van Meer?” he asked Dani without turning his head. His voice was low enough that only she could hear it.

  She tensed. What in the world did he mean? “I’m no coward,” she managed.

  “What I have in mind could get you killed.”

  Her heart leaped. “The stewardess!”

  He looked down at her. His eyes were dark and quiet and his face was like so much granite. “That will depend on you. When we approach that airport I want you to distract the man with the syringe. Just distract him. Force him to move that syringe for just a fraction of a second.”

  “Why do anything?” she asked softly. “You said that they’d leave—”

  “Because they’re desperate now,” he said quietly. “And I have no doubt whatsoever that one of their demands is going to be for automatic weapons. Once they have those, we’ve lost any chance of escape.”

  “The authorities won’t give them weapons,” she said.

  “Once they’ve used that acid on a couple of people they will,” he said.

  She shuddered again. She could taste her own fear, but Dutch seemed oddly confident. He also seemed to know what he was doing. She looked up into his eyes with returning faith. No, she told herself, she’d been reading him wrong. All that time he’d been quiet, he’d been thinking. And now she trusted him instinctively.

  “You could be killed,” he repeated, hating the words even as he said them. How could he put her in danger? But how could he not take the chance? “There’s a risk. I won’t minimize it.”

  She sighed. “Nobody would miss me, except maybe you and Harriett,” she said dryly.

  He felt odd. She didn’t say it in a self-pitying way. It was just a simple statement of fact. Nobody gave a damn. He knew how that felt himself, because outside the group nobody cared about him, either. Except for Dani. And he cared about her, too. He was suddenly vulnerable because of her, he realized.

  She looked up at him with wide gray eyes that had seen too little living to be closed forever.

  “There’s a chance I could manage it alone,” he began slowly.

  “I’m not afraid,” she said. “Well, that is, I am afraid, but I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

  So Gabby wasn’t a freak after all, he told himself, gratified to find Dani so much like his best friend’s wife. This little dove had teeth, just as he’d suspected.

  He smiled faintly. “Okay, tiger. Here’s what I want you to do….”

  She went over it again and again in her mind in the minutes that followed. She chewed her lower lip until it was sore, and then chewed it some more. She had to get it right the first time. The poor stewardess wouldn’t have a second chance. If they failed—and she still didn’t realize how Dutch was going to get to that man in time—the stewardess would die.

  She agonized over it until the captain announced that the plane was on its approach to Miami. He cautioned the passengers to stay calm and not panic, and to stay in their seats once the plane was on the ground. He sounded as strained as Dani felt. That hand grenade was the most terrifying part of all, and she wondered how Dutch was going to prevent the second man from throwing it.

  The plane circled the airport and went down, landing roughly this time, bumping around as it went toward the terminal. Dani got her first glimpse of Miami and thought ironically that she sure was getting to see a lot of the world!

  As soon as the plane came to a halt, Dutch touched her arm and looked down at her. Dani closed her eyes on a brief prayer.

  The man with the syringe had just moved back into the cabin. He looked taut and nervous as well. The stewardess looked as though she’d given up all hope of living and had resigned herself to the horror of the acid. Her eyes were blank.

  “Uh, senor…?” Dani called, getting halfway out of her seat.

  The short man jumped at the sound of her voice and his arm tightened around the stewardess. “What you want?” he growled.

  “I…Oh, please…” Dani clutched the back of the seat and her gray eyes widened as she fought to make the words come out. “I have to go…to the restroom, please….”

  The short man cursed. He called something in another language to the man in the cockpit, who looked out, angrily.

  “I have to!” Dani pleaded, looking and sounding convincing.

  The tall man muttered something and the short one laughed curtly. “All right,” he said after a minute, during which Dani aged five years. “Come on, then.”

  She slipped over Dutch, and while she was moving, his hand went slowly to his inside jacket pocket.

  Dani moved into the aisle and started carefully toward the restroom on the other side of the man with the syringe. Two more steps, she told herself. Her heart pounded, and she kept her eyes cast downward in case the man saw the terror in them and reacted too quickly. One more step. Please don’t fail me, she said silently to Dutch. This is insane, I’m only twenty-six, I don’t want to die, I’ve only just gotten married!

  One more step. And she stopped and swayed, putting a hand to her temple. “I’m so sick!” And it was almost the truth. She deliberately let herself fall toward him.

  It was enough. It was enough. He instinctively moved to catch her, and at that instant Dutch threw the knife. The syringe went to the floor as the hijacker caught his middle. Dutch was out of his seat in a heartbeat. It was ’Nam all over again. Angola. Rhodesia. He ignored Dani, who was watching with incredulous eyes, tore the stewardess out of the hijacker’s helpless grasp, threw her into a seat and kicked the hypodermic out of the way. He was through the cockpit door seconds after he’d thrown the knife, ignoring the groaning bald man on the floor as he went for the taller man.

  “I will throw it, senor!” the man threatened, and grasped the firing pin of the grenade.

  “Go ahead,” Dutch said, and kept going. With two movements of his hands, so quick that the pilot didn’t even see them, the hijacker went down with the grenade in his hand.

  “He’s pulled the pin!” the young copilot yelled, and there was pandemonium in the airplane.

  “For God’s sake,” Dutch growled, retrieving it, “what are you afraid of, flying bits of plastic?” And he tossed the cheap imitation into the pilot’s lap.

  The copilot started to dive for it, but the pilot, a man in his late forties, just laughed. He turned toward Dutch and grinned.

  “I should have realized why he was so nervous.”

  The copilot was still gaping. “It’s a fake!”

  “Keep it for a souvenir.” The pilot sighed, tossing it to his colleague. “How’s Lainie?”

  “If you mean the stewardess, she’s okay,” Dutch said. “But his buddy isn’t. You’d better get a doctor out here.”

  “Right away. Hey. Thanks,” the pilot said with a quiet smile.

  Dutch shrugged. “Pure self-interest,” he said. “He was holding up my coffee.”

  “I’ll buy you a cup when we get out of here,” the captain offered.

  Dutch grinned. “Take you up on that.”

  He left the cockpit. “It wasn’t a live grenade,” he called, the authority in his voice pacifying the nervous passengers. “It’s all over, just sit quietly.”

  Dani was sitting on the floor, staring horrified at the groaning man with the knife in his stomach while she tried to deal with what was happening. She looked up at the stranger she’d married without even recognizing him. Who was he?

  Dutch was sorry she’d had to see it, but there was no other way to do it. He bent and caught her by the arms and pulled her up gently.

  “He’ll be okay,” he said. “No sweat. Let’s get off this thing.” He pulled her toward the door. Two other flight attendants came rushing from the back of the plane, embracing the stewardess, apologizing for not being able to help.

  “It’s okay,” the little blond said shakily. “I’m fine.”

  She turned to Dutch, all blue eyes and gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you both!”

  “All in a day’s work,” Dutch said carelessly. “How about
getting this door open? That man needs a medic.”

  The groaning man got their attention. One of the flight attendants bent over him, and the copilot was just frog-marching the second terrorist, whose hands were belted together behind him, into the service compartment.

  “Wait and I’ll show you to the office,” the captain called to Dutch. “We’ll need to speak to the police, I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” Dutch told him. He propelled Dani, who was still half-shocked, down the stairs with him, out into the darkness. “Oh,” he said, turning and addressing the male flight attendant, “would you please get the lady’s books and purse out of seat 7B and bring them to the office?”

  “Be glad to, sir,” came the reply.

  Dani was still shocked, but her mind registered what he’d just said. In the middle of all the furor he’d remembered her blessed books. She looked up at him uncomprehendingly, her eyes wide and frightened and uncertain and still bearing traces of sick terror.

  “I had to,” he said quietly as he recognized the look. “I couldn’t have reached him in time.”

  “Yes, I—I realize that. I’ve just never seen anybody…like that.”

  “You were superb,” he said. “I can think of only one other woman who would have kept her head so well.”

  She wondered whom he meant, but there were more immediate questions. “What…what you did,” she faltered as they waited for the captain. “You said you were a soldier.”

  He turned her gently and held her in front of him, holding her wary gaze. “I am. But not the kind you’re thinking of. I make my living as a professional soldier. I hire out to the highest bidder,” he told her bluntly, without pulling his punches, and watched the horror that filled her face. He hadn’t realized how devastated she was going to be, or how he might feel when he saw the horror in her innocent face. Her reaction surprised him. It irritated him. What had she expected, for God’s sake, a clerk?

  “A mercenary,” she said in a choked tone.

  “Yes,” he replied, his whole stance challenging.

  But she didn’t say anything more. She couldn’t. Her dreams were lying around her feet, and she hurt all the way to her soul. This news was much more devastating than what she’d seen on the plane. She didn’t lift her eyes again; she didn’t speak. Seconds later the pilot, copilot and stewardess who’d been held prisoner joined them, and they went to the airport office. Dani walked apart from Dutch, not touching him. He noticed that, and his face was grim when they got into the building.